For some context in case anyone was curious: according to old news articles, the average weekday ridership in 1989 was ~3.7 million rides per day. It is ~5.7 million rides per day now. Ridership in the past few decades has increased faster than the population. One factor cited in some analyses of this phenomenon is the significant decrease in the crime rate relative to the 1980s and 1990s, but that is likely not the only contributor.